IF you like Wes Anderson and his notoriously whimsical style
of offbeat comedy, you'll love Moonrise Kingdom.

If you don't appreciate
Anderson's previous efforts, particularly The Darjeeling Limited and The Royal
Tenenbaums, then steer clear.

As with those two films, Moonrise Kingdom
touches on the effect a family (or the lack of one) can have on a young person.

Here it's on two misfit kids who are drawn to each other, and the naive
romance between Sam (Gilman) and Suzy (Hayward) forms the sweet centre of this
film as we follow their efforts to run away together.

Sam is fleeing his
Khaki Scout troup, led by the hapless Scout Master Randy (Norton), while Suzy is
running away from her family, particularly her parents (Murray and McDormand),
who have drifted apart but are united by their concerns for Suzy's mental
state.

Leading the search is Captain Sharp (Willis), the lonely and lone
police officer on the island of New Penzance, assisted by Sam's disturbingly
sociopathic fellow scouts.

Anderson's habit of creating a believable (or at
least likeable) hyper-reality are in full effect - we see the Khaki Scouts build
an impossible treehouse for example, and his use of an onscreen narrator is
novel. His idiosyncratic camera moves (the movie is full of sideways tracking
shots and slow pans), his shot composition (Anderson loves symmetry), and his
eccentric background details (particularly a kid who starts trampolining behind
an inaudible conversation) only add to this world and the movie's unique
tone.

This hyper-reality exists on a knife's edge however, and towards it's
end, Moonrise Kingdom tips too far into the unbelievable zone, most notably when
one character gets struck by lightning.

Gilman and Hayward's performances
are stilted and subdued but hilarious and work in well with Anderson's trademake
tone, while Norton, Murray and McDormand are also superb (as are Harvey Keitel,
Tilda Swinton and Anderson regular Jason Schwarzman in small roles).

But the
best turn comes from Willis, who gives his most interesting performance since 12
Monkeys. His is the most intriguing character, managing to be both authoritative
yet browbeaten, and a lonely soul yet the emotional core of the film. Even the
fact that his character is supposedly "dumb" and that Anderson and co-writer
Roman Coppola are incapable of writing "dumb" doesn't distract from Willis'
tender performance.

The disfunctional family may have been better explored by
Anderson in The Darjeeling Limited and The Royal Tenenbaums, as this beloved
theme of Anderson's is more of a sidebar or springboard to the main story of
Moonrise Kingdom.

And that main story is something new for the quirky
director. At its heart, Moonrise Kingdom is a sweet and surprising love story
with a healthy twist of typically warped humour.